It’s not every day that a developer wants me to coach their team on urbanism, & critique their partially built inner city project so next phases can be better. Looking forward to workshopping with @greenstonehomes & city staff on @KendallYards in #Spokane Washington this week.
The heart of #Spokane’s @KendallYards neighbourhood is the new/evolving main street — walkable streetscape, generous patio seating, human scale. Next phase can have more housing above the street providing more eyes & “body heat.” People come from all over to enjoy the new street.
Every good new main street, & every walkable neighbourhood, needs at least one walkable urban grocery store. @KendallYards’s grocery store #MyFreshBasket is more than a store — it’s a community gathering place. #Spokane #completecommunities #thirdplace
Much of our work today with the @KendallYards team has been about defining a next level of density & urban design in the next phases of the neighbourhood. Given its context next to downtown, there are many reasons to want more density & “body heat” & more “urban” street edges.
1st impressions of Downtown #Spokane:
- stunning river gorge
- many beautiful old buildings
- mostly bad newer buildings
- nice riverfront park
- way too much surface parking
- too many wide 1-way “traffic sewers”
- badly in need of multi-modal street investment
- needs housing!
Attracting downtown housing takes more than just rethinking density & parking minimums — it needs investment in the public realm, infrastructure & amenities that makes downtown housing livable & lovable. An example — Downtown #Spokane’s proposed Main Ave transformation concept.
What’s remarkable about this crowd, is that it isn’t a big annual city-wide special event. It’s just the weekly #NightMarket on the recently built @KendallYards main street, done by a developer with vision & will.
Smart community-building includes smart public space programming.
This is VERY interesting & inspiring — In #Spokane’s new @KendallYards neighbourhood, the @SparkCentral509 non-profit creative space/small urban library, set up to support family access to learning & tech for the broader community, including the adjacent low income neighbourhood.
8 keys to a stronger downtown in #Spokane Washington (or possibly YOUR downtown) — my interview with @danielwinlander in @TheInlander. Complete streets for people, less surface parking, better architecture, more housing, amenities for livability, etc. inlander.com/spokane/advanc…
"Sharrows are not bike infrastructure. Painted bike lanes are not bike infrastructure. Bike infrastructure is safe, separated protected #bikelanes. Cities need to prioritize walking, biking & public transit, at least until they catch up to the car."
NEW: It’s one of the most counter-intuitive community conversations you can have, that more parking isn’t necessarily good, that wider roads just induce more driving. As hard as it is, it’s a conversation that must be had. My @SpokesmanReview interview: spokesman.com/stories/2018/j…
“When you design a city for cars, it fails everyone, including drivers. ‘Including drivers’ is the most important part of that sentence. When you design a multi-modal city that makes walking, biking & transit enjoyable, it works better for everyone, including drivers.”
“We have more information & data about the ripple effects of #multimodalcities than ever before. What I know for sure is if you put in the infrastructure & do it right, you will get more people walking, biking, taking transit. But if you don’t, you won’t. It’s really simple.”
It’s not unique to Washington State, but the HUGE problem of liability/costs with condo developments in cities like #Spokane, leading to developers refusing to do condos, MUST be solved. Doing urban development with only rental is like swimming with 1 hand tied behind your back.
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